1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of forming individual food pieces from extruded food material.
2. Description of the Background Art
Food products produced by processes involving extrusion are well known. In the production of puffed snack products, a farinaceous material typically is extruded through a die orifice, fly-cut into snack-size pieces while still soft, then baked or fried into the final product. Fly-cutting of soft extrudate shortly after extrusion generally does not provide a clean, planar cut of the material, but instead, usually results in a non-uniform "pinch" cut of the material. On the other hand, if the extrudate is allowed to completely rigidify prior to cutting, the material shatters upon cutting to produce a fractured product rather than a product with a smooth, straight cut.
A variety of devices are known in the art for cutting materials that can have quite different characteristics. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,120,627 discloses an apparatus for continuously extruding a rod of marshmallow material that is fed to a pair of opposed cutter drums by a continuous belt conveyor and a plurality of guide rollers.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,364,877 discloses a device wherein a cutting roller acts against a smooth surface of an endless belt feeder and roller, or against a roller alone with an independent belt feeder, to uniformily feed product to be cut.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,365,838 discloses a candy stick machine wherein material to be formed into candy sticks is fed to a cutter between a pair of rollers, the material then being thereafter cut by knives mounted on a roller.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,551 discloses an apparatus wherein a continuous strip of material is passed between a pair of press rollers which then is fed to a second roller station for feeding continuous material to a third set of cutting rollers to finally divide the product.
Other patents showing various roller-type feeder and cutter devices are shown in the following U.S. Pat. Nos: 4,340,342; 4,008,639; 3,869,831; 3,123,656; 2,043,554 and 1,330,434.
There remains a need in the art for processes and devices for uniformly forming individual pieces of food material.